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The Proposal

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen of the Nobel Committee:

I am an informed member of the public, concerned about the unsustainable direction in which human civilization is hastily heading, wishing to express my profound support for the award of the coming year’s Nobel Peace Prize to key figures in the field of Sustainable Development constituted as follows:

The Club of Rome, for its bold foresight in commissioning the seminal Limits to Growth study and report done at MIT and published in 1972. With this organizational candidate the award recognition would encompass the Club of Rome as well as the authors of the Limits to Growth study itself, Donella Meadows, Dennis Meadows, and Jorgen Randers.

Herman Daly, former World Bank Senior Economist, widely recognized as the father of Ecological Economics, a practical alternative to the current mainstream growth economics, which ignores the limits to Earth’s resources and its ability to absorb our wastes. His work spawned legions of sustainability practitioners, consultants, managers, researchers and implementation by enlightened institutions, corporations and governments.

Pope Francis, for his strong advocacy of sustainable development in the face of society’s present unsustainable economic mainstream, which puts at risk poorer peoples and nations, and eventually all of humanity. He courageously returns the world’s focus to the damage the current economic system is doing to people and planet. His papal encyclical, Laudato Si’, has transformed the current conversation bringing into clear focus the conflict between our present unsustainable economic model and the well-being of humanity and the natural systems upon which we depend.

The Club of Rome tilled the soil so that the field now known as Sustainable Development might come into being. Herman Daly formulated and refined seeds to be planted and cultivated by a host of practitioners, policy makers and teachers of Sustainable Development. Pope Francis has tirelessly cultivated and promoted the field by illuminating the need for a sustainable alternative to our current rapacious economic model of development, which marginalizes, exploits and harms people and Nature, creating inequity, strife, suffering and tearing apart the fabric of Nature that supports all of life on Earth.

The award of this Peace Prize is not only deserved, but will help stimulate a paradigm shift from the present unsustainable economic growth model to a sustainable one where a) improvements in the quality of life are valued more highly than increases in financial wealth and the gross amount produced and discarded (GDP), and b) wealth and well-being are more equitably distributed than with the current system that is predicated upon the increasing concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.

Since the Peace Prize has only twice been shared by three nominees, it is left to the Nobel Committee how best to make the intended award. Shared by two of the three suggested nominees, it will still recognize the critical importance of truly sustainable development to world peace and the avoidance of future suffering.

This is a most timely award and I urge the Nobel Committee to consider further elaboration of why these candidates are worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize at the website NP4SD.org. I sincerely appreciate your consideration of this forward-looking Peace Prize.

We invite you to join us in advancing this award for the sake of all present and future humanity and life on Earth by:

Sharingthis effort with associates, colleagues and friends and reaching out by personal contact (email, phone, and in person) especially to Qualified Nominatorsto make this nomination. You very possibly know several since the category includes “University professors, professors emeriti and associate professors of history, social sciences, law, philosophy, theology, and religion; university rectors and university directors (or their equivalents).

NOTE: If you are a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate we encourage you to make this nomination privately and directly to the Nobel Committee in light of their expressed desire for confidentiality. However, should you choose to use the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate form on this website, rest assured we will not list your name publicly nor divulge your nomination ever.